CVE-2023-3978 | Improper rendering of text nodes in golang.org/x/net/html

Text nodes not in the HTML namespace are incorrectly literally rendered, causing text which should be escaped to not be. This could lead to an XSS attack.

Published: 2023-08-02 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2023-3978 is rated Moderate Risk (43.7/100): CVSS Medium severity, with medium exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.84%). Review affected assets and schedule remediation.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-3978

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.10% 0.84% +0.75%
2 2025-11-21 0.62% 0.10% -0.52%
3 2025-11-18 — 0.62% —

Full EPSS history (9 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-3978

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
6.1 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:C)
Breaking this can reach past the original component and bite other resources—bigger blast radius.
Confidentiality (C:L)
Some sensitive info could get out, but not a total data dump.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 2.8 2.7 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-3978

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2023-3978

GHSA-2wrh-6pvc-2jm9 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: go — Improper rendering of text nodes in golang.org/x/net/html

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-3978

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2023-3978 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (golang-golang-x-net), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 3, open 2. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-3978
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-3978
suse medium CVE-2023-3978 severity moderate: SUSE including 46 source package names (cni, golang-github-lusitaniae-apache_exporter-1.0.8-1.1, …), 89 product×package rows across 35 product lines (SUSE CaaS Platform 4.0, SUSE Enterprise Storage 7, … (35 product lines)): Fixed 67, Known Not Affected 22. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-3978/
ubuntu medium CVE-2023-3978 medium priority: Ubuntu including 7 source packages (adsys, containerd, …), 65 status rows across 12 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, lunar, mantic, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 28, DNE 15, ignored 9, released 9, needs-triage 4. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-3978

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-3978

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
golang networking < 0.13.0 cpe:2.3:a:golang:networking:*:*:*:*:*:go:*:*

References for CVE-2023-3978

URL Tags
https://go.dev/cl/514896 Patch
https://go.dev/issue/61615 Issue Tracking Patch Vendor Advisory
https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2023-1988 Issue Tracking Patch Vendor Advisory
cvelogic Threat Intelligence